Hi
May I please ask who are the unknowns or unidentified Jane Does here?I have tried for years to find out and no one has worked with me or answered me or the medical examiners office.my sister came up missing in 1983 from Brevard County Florida.If someone finds out please help me and email me at
[email protected]
suzanne
TITUSVILLE - Among the weeping willows and pine needles covering this field of grave markers, Joanie Johanesen-Urich frets over the people buried here who share a common name: "John Doe."
"There are some people buried here that we don't even know who they are," said Johanesen-Urich, who helps maintain the grave site. "It's sad that their families will never know where they are, that they have family members who are searching for them."
This nameless Day Street cemetery -- the final resting place for the unidentified, the unclaimed and the poor -- is filling up quickly, with about 60 indigent burials a year. But now the county is turning to cremation as a way to save space and to curb the financial strain of burying those who have no one else.
The burial ground, tucked into the backyard of County Acres, a county-run children's home in Titusville, is home to the unidentified remains of homicide victims, prostitutes
and homeless people. Next to them lie jail inmates, senior citizens and people without families to claim their bodies, as well as those whose relatives can't afford a burial.
State law says each county must fund its own disposal of unclaimed and unidentified remains. Brevard's budget nearly doubled to $80,000 in 2007 after the county exceeded the graveyard's $50,000 budget four times since 2001.
Since 1932, nearly 400 people have been buried at the Day Street site. But over the years, the number of people buried there has increased so rapidly that only 200 plots are left unfilled, county Housing and Human Services Director Gay Williams said.
Officials said they now are looking at ways to reserve the burial space for those who need it most.
